Our Sister Republic: Creating Mexico in the Minds of the American Public and the Role of the Press

Abstract

During the Mexican War, Americans radically transformed their ideas about Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. The Mexican War offered itself up as the first of such interactions between the neighboring republics. The Mexican during the War was met largely with criticism from the American public, a criticism aided by the work of the press. While a vast majority of the presses disparaged the Mexican populace on a variety of subjects, not all papers denigrated the Mexicans as some inferior population in need of assistance from the United States in order to survive and reach a proper level of civilization. Papers such as the Catholic and abolitionist presses sought to portray the Mexican in a more positive light. Analysis of these spheres of influence of the various presses offers up a genesis of the Mexican within the American imagination.